Post by christrott on Jun 3, 2012 19:05:53 GMT
While Bethune was at the helm when the Bankruptcy occurred, Lorenzo was the one who started it. I suggest you get the book Denver International Airport: Lessons Learned. It covers in depth the entire history of DIA versus Continental and the contract issues. It makes very clear that the reason Continental filed bankruptcy was because of the loss of Stapleton as a maintenance base and their inability to get out of the lease they'd already signed for Concourse A, not because the costs were higher and that the ball started rolling before Lorenzo was run out.
As it is, I would contend that if Continental was in such bad financial shape, Lorenzo made it worse, and the correct outcome should have been for Continental to fail. It's that simple. That's how I see it with all of the airlines. If they put themselves into a bad position (remember, someone agreed to the previous contracts with Continental, so management is just as much at fault as the unions), then they need to deal with it, not use tricky accounting and bankruptcy to hack and slash the airline. What they ended up with when he did it was a workforce that was 100% against management and took it out on the passengers. That only made things worse for Continental because they continued to loose market share and thus revenue, only making it inevitable that they would have to file for bankruptcy again or fail, especially when management continued to make bad decisions.
The guy did nothing but fail businesses, plain and simple. His handing of employees was only a small part of the issue.
As it is, I would contend that if Continental was in such bad financial shape, Lorenzo made it worse, and the correct outcome should have been for Continental to fail. It's that simple. That's how I see it with all of the airlines. If they put themselves into a bad position (remember, someone agreed to the previous contracts with Continental, so management is just as much at fault as the unions), then they need to deal with it, not use tricky accounting and bankruptcy to hack and slash the airline. What they ended up with when he did it was a workforce that was 100% against management and took it out on the passengers. That only made things worse for Continental because they continued to loose market share and thus revenue, only making it inevitable that they would have to file for bankruptcy again or fail, especially when management continued to make bad decisions.
The guy did nothing but fail businesses, plain and simple. His handing of employees was only a small part of the issue.
